On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, Adam Stiles wrote:
Binary compatibility is irrelevant at best {every Linux machine already has a
compiler installed} and harmful at worst {Windows has wide-scale binary
compatibility -- and rampant malware}. All that matters is _source_
compatibility: that the same source code will compile cleanly on a range of
different architectures. Thanks to the excellent work done by the GNU
project in developing their compiler suite and automated configuration /
building tools, source compatibility is already a reality. And processors
are fast enough now that there is no time saved in using precompiled
binaries.
I've heard this argument before. Maybe I misunderstand, but it seems to
amount to:
1) We don't care about anything that's not free software. (This is already
too much for most people, but let's say that's no problem...)
2) We believe that C/C++ is usually magically portable across hardware
architectures.
3) For any software, like say wine, mplayer with win32 emulation, etc,
where the magic doesn't work, we expect you to _not_ switch architectures,
or _not_ use that software, until you port it properly. (If you "cheat"
with binary compatibility, porting may go too slowly, or may not happen at
all.)
This is where I fail to see the logic that binary compatibility is
harmful. We all migrate sometime. This is a migration aid. For some time
period it's quite possible that binary compatibility is the optimal
solution when considering the costs/benefits. Impracticality need not be
the new credo of free software...
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